Legal Complications Will Not Deter U.S. Senate from Ratifying U.N. Genocide Pact

October 19, 1950

LAKE SUCCESS (Oct. 18)

Majority support shaped up today in the U.N. Legal Committee for a resolution that would delay for at least a year the termination of the procedure to be used in handling reservations to the genocide convention, which several days ago secured the requisite ratification to bring the pact into force on Jan. 12, 1951.

The world’s two major powers–the United States and Russia–are considering ratification of the genocide treaty with reservations, and the Legal Committee’s resolution would seek ruling on such reservations from both the International Court of Justice at The Hague and the U.N.’s International Law Commission. The question at issue is whether or not all or only some of a convention’s ratifiers must accept reservations before a reserving country’s ratification becomes valid.

Proponents of the genocide convention have feared that delay in deciding this question might postpone ratification by the United States. However, Jack B. Tate, American representative on the Legal Committee, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency today that there was no basis for such an assumption. Pointing out that the problem of handling reservations to multilateral conventions had been unsolved for 150 years, he said that the interim period of the next year or so would represent no change from the past and expressed the view that the U.S. Senate would not be deterred by this particular issue.